It’s been almost a month since my last post, so I clearly didn’t make my deadline of finishing this 365 project by my birthday… What can I say, I have a life! But seriously, I’ve done several creative projects recently, but I just haven’t had the time to post them! At any rate, I think I’ll definitely have this done by May, but we’ll see. Moving on…

This creative project was my birthday present to my awesome boyfriend! His birthday was January 31 and we had just started dating the weekend before that. I don’t know about ya’ll, but I’m terrible about buying gifts for men… I never know what to get them! Plus, we were in that awkward period of the relationship where we were just getting to know each other, so a typical expensive boyfriend gift didn’t seem appropriate. Anyways, in one of our first conversations Chris had mentioned that he wasn’t a UT fan (why the hell not??!!!), but he really liked Eric Berry who went there, but now plays for the KC Chiefs! I agree that Eric Berry is amazing and was fortunate enough to see him on the bus at UT between classes once! So, I decided I would do something creative and FREE for Chris’s birthday and do a portrait of Eric Berry!

I decided to do a digital portrait so I could work on it while nannying on my iPad when the baby was asleep. I used the same app from my Dad’s portrait, Sketch Book Express, to draw this one. Here’s the original photograph of Eric Berry in all his muscular glory!

So I took that photo into Sketch Book Express and just started layering over it with the paintbrush tool. It took me maybe 3 or 4 hours over 2 days of nannying to complete it. Then I used the Over app like in my Typography post and added his name and nickname “The Fifth Dimension!” I have no idea why he’s named that, but I love the way it sounds, so whatever. Then I took that back into the Sketch Book Express app and wrote Happy Birthday and signed it! Here’s the finished product!

I’m extremely happy with the way this turned out! It was relatively easy to do with this app, but it looks like a unique piece of art! The best part is that Chris loved it! I’m pretty certain that’s why I’m his girlfriend! Well, that and our mutual love of Dr. Pepper! I love this drawing and will definitely be doing more like it!

As you all know, when there comes an occasion where I need to give a gift, I usually try and make something rather than purchase it. This christmas was no exception. I made one thing for most of the people in my family that I will post at a later date, but for my dad, I decided to crochet him a hat! I found this really cool pattern that was rated as easy, so I thought, “I could do that!” NOPE. For reasons unknown to me, it ended up big enough to completely cover Bob Ross’ fro without smashing it down a bit and the bill could have doubled as a paddle. So, after all that, I unraveled the whole thing and started over with a smaller crochet hook. Half-way through I realized I was going to have the same problem again!! So, the whole point of that story was that I ended up doing something completely different for my dad for Christmas: a digitally drawn portrait. It’s a completely random gift and I don’t know that he’ll ever print it out or anything, but I had fun doing it!

I’ve done digitally drawn portraits in Photoshop before, but I had never done one on my iPad. I had heard and seen pictures of these amazing images people created on their iPads, so I decided to give it a go!

This is the original picture I copied and it happens to be one of my favorite pictures of my dad!

I read some reviews about different free drawing apps and decided to use Sketch Book Express from Autodesk. Autodesk is the maker of AutoCad, a computer drafting program that the majority of designers, architects, and engineers use, so I figured it had to be good! And I’m glad I chose it, because it was so nice to use! I started by loading the original image into the background layer, then slowly layering colors onto a new layer using the paintbrush tool. In photoshop when doing this sort of thing, I could have it select exactly the color I needed, but SketchBook didn’t have that tool, so I changed around the CMYK levels until I got the colors I needed. I started with the face and hand, then the hair (this was more of an airbrush tool to soften it), then the shirt. I finished with the background, or a rough interpretation of that! And here’s the final product!

I totally meant to crop out the edges where I went outside the lines, but I sort of like the messy, artsy look of it! Overall, I’m really happy how this turned out! I sent it to dad, and he loves it too! It’s sort of goofy, but so is my dad, so it works. I think I will definitely be using that app again as well!

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the game Draw Something for phones/tablets, but it’s a really fun game sort of like Pictionary where you draw pictures for your friend to guess. It’s really addictive and hilarious and also the inspiration for this post!

I was playing a friend of mine and got the word “fruit.” Before I knew it I became inthralled in the drawing of various fruits with epic shading! She probably guessed the word way before I finished drawing, but I had so much fun that I decided to do some more drawings on my iPad without having to worry about my time in the game. I started by drawing a peach, then ended up, on a whim adding the phrase “She’s such a peach” to it. So I thought, what are some other fruit-related phrases that I could use? So I ended up with 4 drawing/phrase combos! First comes the peach…

Then I drew a slice of a lemon with “When life gives you lemons.” I think this is my least favorite…

Then I drew a couple of cherries with the phrase “Life’s a bowl of cherries.”

Finally I drew a green apple with the phrase “the apple of my eye!”

I think the apple is my favorite! I really loved playing with the layering of different shades on top of each other to get the final image! I think I’ll do some more finger doodling on my iPad